I want something that can play all my videos which are in different formats. Quicktime is absolutely terrible. Can someone recommend me a media player similar to Windows Media Player where I can have a list of my videos on the side so I know what I'm watching and what's coming up. Thanks!
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What is the best media player out there for Mac?
- Thread starter MK25toLife
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VLC
Not sure about the playlist as I haven't used it for that but VLC is the best media player IMO.
VLC seems to have the best codecs...it plays the most formats "out of the box." QT is great, but I have more problem with a lack of codecs than with VLC. I don't know of a player that supports sidebar listing like you want. I'm still really surprised that Apple doesn't have an "iPhoto" for organizing video clips. Seems natural.
I do just fne with QT and VLC. I also installed Flip4MacWMV for those rare times there's a wmv on a website or whatever.
Another vote for VLC... its really the only media player outside of QT that I use. I am too lazy to do anything about codecs for QT so I go to VLC and hasn't failed me yet 
itunes is your friend here. its kinda like the windows media player for OS X but better. you can view movies in itunes and have the playlist there to. itunes now allows you to view movies in the itunes window without another window popping up which i like. then you can just press esc to go back to the playlist and then double click on the movie again to see where you just left off. itunes used to be terrible at playing movies a few versions ago but i guess they've polished off the quicktime frameworks and it plays movies fine now.
as for playing different formats in itunes just get perian and flip4mac. quicktime/itunes will now be able to play pretty much everything xvid, divx, wmv, ac3 etc. but iTunes will only play movies with file extensions it understands. so if you just save for example an avi movie as a reference file or a self-contained movie (this one has a bigger file size) with quicktime pro and import it into itunes, itunes will play it fine.
if you dont like playing video in itunes then just use quicktime. i use vlc as a last resort. i dont like it that much... got an ugly interface and it seems to crash a lot for me.
also a tip for importing movies into itunes. if you dont want itunes to orgainse your movies into its own special folder and you want to keep them somewhere else then just untick "copy items to itunes music folder when adding to library" then your itunes library size wont grow at a huge rate.
this is what i do and works perfect for me.
as for playing different formats in itunes just get perian and flip4mac. quicktime/itunes will now be able to play pretty much everything xvid, divx, wmv, ac3 etc. but iTunes will only play movies with file extensions it understands. so if you just save for example an avi movie as a reference file or a self-contained movie (this one has a bigger file size) with quicktime pro and import it into itunes, itunes will play it fine.
if you dont like playing video in itunes then just use quicktime. i use vlc as a last resort. i dont like it that much... got an ugly interface and it seems to crash a lot for me.
also a tip for importing movies into itunes. if you dont want itunes to orgainse your movies into its own special folder and you want to keep them somewhere else then just untick "copy items to itunes music folder when adding to library" then your itunes library size wont grow at a huge rate.
this is what i do and works perfect for me.
I should clarify that in "media," I mean I use iTunes for anything audio, and VLC for all video.
In a word? NO. Definitely not. iTunes is pretty much the ONLY program to use for audio on OS X. Period.
I love iTunes was just curious because there are a few things which definitely could be improved and added and should have been already really. I just wonder what iTunes 8 will bring when it gets here. Winamp is pretty sharp though and I definitely wouldn't mind it being on Mac OS X now it supports Album Art etc.
they do. it's called iMovie '08.
the whole point of iMovie '08 was to make it more like iPhoto and iTunes in that it holds all your media for that particular medium (i.e., iPhoto for pictures, iMovie for videos). i don't know that it would meet the OP's requests, though and i doubt it plays all formats, particularly WMV.
Yeah, except for the fact that iTunes doesnt support .flac and other formats. I use Cog, it's sort of like winamp for mac. And it supports every format I need it to.
